Kind Young Master [Progression Fantasy - Cultivation]

Within the flames, he saw two lanterns. Royal purple, flickering fitfully, and watchful. A mouth opened beneath in a broad and humorless smile. The teeth were as long as his arm, thicker around, and polished white. Though formations had been etched into the gleaming ivory, he could not read them clearly.

"Am I dead?"

His words were swallowed in cushions of thick silence. A world of black flame that did not burn. The fang nearest him detached, floating to rest in his upraised hands. When it did so, the lanterns, eyes, winked out, and the mouth vanished. Still the world around him burned, so he traced the formation with his gaze, and recognized it instantly.

This is what he had been doing, or tried to do, in mimicking the remnant and the power of his gu-en. The ground was solid beneath his feet, even if he could not see it, so he sat to study the graven diagram until it was as good as written in his skull.

***

Zhang Sha watched the young, stupid genius go up in a pillar of onyx flame. The girl screamed, and the fox whined, but they were no longer in any danger. That Ash Eater woman had vanished with Fushuai, and if either of them came back, it wouldn't be her.

He dropped to one knee, his internal energy bleeding as freely as the stump of his wrist. It was easy to twist off the pain and tuck it into an unused corner of his mind. If the kind young master didn't return, his ghosts would, and it would soon have company. The wound itself was a bit harder to manage than the sensation. He was right-handed, and dealing with an amputation generally required both dexterity and as many digits as there were available. It didn't help that his remaining hand was sliced open at the palm, and his abdomen was barely holding together. Earth and water qi were good for sealing wounds, but really, his body was currently stringed into a semblance of wholeness by nothing more than dream.

"Gao Lin." There was no need for false names now. "I require your assistance."

"My brother," she said, unable to look away from the pillar of darkness that raging raged at the base of the steps.

"You can't help him. You can help me."

The girl approached as cautiously as if he were a wild beast, when all he was trying to do was pinch off an artery. Will and bodily control could only take one so far. He had commanded his heart to slow, but blood still spurted from the wound with every breath.

"Why did you save me?" She demanded, hands hidden in her sleeves.

"You noticed that, did you?"

Frowning, she summoned a film of water to encase his stump. It would buy him some time, at least.

"What did you call that one again?"

"Salve of Morning Dew."

He nodded. "I've seen similar among the Hollow Reed. You would do well there, at least if you had a sponsor. My name wouldn't get you very far." As he talked, he summoned his physician's bag and began sorting through tools, salves, and jars of ingredients. There were many reasons to wear a storage ring on the foot instead of the hand, and this scenario was one of them.

"Please, fetch me my hand."

She did so, then stood holding it awkwardly in her own as he uncorked a bottle with his teeth. Bai Tu was pacing around the blackflame pillar, tail down, still whining. Of no use to anyone. If Fushuai had just given the creature a hunger elixir or allowed him to work on it, the fox would have been so much more than it was. He treated it more like a friend than a beast. Foolish.

"Release the binding."

"Are you sure?" Her eyes widened, as lovely as gemstones. The pain of the sight was far worse than that of his wound, and more difficult to fold away. He couldn't even be sure if she looked as much like his sister had as he thought she did, or whether his memories had become as twisted as his root. Mi Lu. Her eyes had been like jewels as well. They would have called her a jade beauty if she'd had the opportunity to grow up. Of course, he would have had to beat some sense into anyone who looked too long or spoke too much of her appearance, but that didn't mean it wouldn't have been true.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Listen to me," he said. "When you release the binding, I am going to apply an elixir. It will be...disturbing to you. But when I say the word, you will need to hold that hand in place while I sew it back on. Can you do that, little doctor?"

Her lips thinned, but she nodded.

"Excellent. Now release the binding."

She did as he asked, and he had the grace of a few seconds before the bleeding would start again. The potion stank like rotted meat as he poured, and it sizzled like acid when it touched the exposed flesh and bone. Gao Lin paled at the sight and the stench, but she didn't gag or look away. He approved of her resolve.

He set down the bottle in favor of a bone needle already prepped with thread.

"Press it firmly."

Her hesitation lasted no longer than a blink, and he was soon threading a qi-binding into his own skin.

"You asked why I saved you..."

"A childish question," she said quickly. "I already know the answer. It is your debt to my brother. You swore to balance your misdeeds before you abandoned this life for another. It surprised me to see you risk yourself for me, but I know it was nothing more than calculation."

"There are no debts between me and my sworn brother."

"Oath or debt, call it what you will." Her nose twitched. Rotting meat didn't smell much better when it was burning. A lot of foulness had gone into the making of this potion, but it was effective all the same.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I once belonged to a noble family? Somewhat noble. A withered branch. My ancestors dwelled in the Immortal City."

"If they were as dishonorable as you, it is no wonder that the branch withered."

Those were words to kill for, but he felt no anger. Something pinched in his chest as he looked up to meet the young girl's eyes. For a moment, the tunnel was gone, and he saw his sister standing in the courtyard under the branches of a brightmellow tree. She waved to him, eager to demonstrate the cycling method she had just learned from the Zhang family tutor. Then came the fire, the ash, the swords.

Lin looked away.

"They weren't as dishonorable as I," he said. A twinge in his arm told him he had misplaced a stitch, and he was forced to go over it again. "But there was dishonor in my family. The less people have, the more fiercely they fight over it. All we had were old promises."

"So where are the Zhangs now?"

"Hardly any left. Two households still carried the name when I was young. And because of old promises, one of those households was going to be allowed to bring a child before the Emperor. The honor was decided by an exhibition. My cousin, Zhang Yu Jie, stood against me, and I defeated her soundly, then added insult to injury by refusing to go myself."

"Wise of you. You knew you weren't worthy of being in the emperor's sight."

"Hah. You say that as if it were meant to hurt my pride, but there's nothing left to wound, little doctor. I refused, because in every generation, the Zhang family was given only one chance to meet the Emperor. Of course, that's more than anyone else outside of the Immortal City gets, but the point is, it couldn't be wasted on me. My sister was the star of our bloodline. I was stronger because I was older, but a difference like that wouldn't matter to the Immortal Wang Yinjing. She had a root almost as pure as your brother's. Yang instead of Yin. Her destiny was written in the heavens. If she had been allowed to stand before him, the fortunes of our family would have been reversed. All our lives, even my cousin's, would have changed forever."

Lightning shot up his wrist, and his hand twitched. Lin gasped, and nearly dropped it.

"Almost done," he grimaced.

"If she had been allowed?" Lin's look was guarded. "Did you not pass the honor to her?"

"I did, and a date was set. Then my Aunt and Uncle arranged for our home to be burned to the ground with us inside it. With only two twigs left at the end of our withered branch, in their eyes, only one could flourish." He set down the needle and cradled his newly attached hand. It hung limply. The twitch had been entirely involuntary, and it would be days, if not decans, of struggle before he could be sure it would heal properly. Otherwise, it would have to be chopped off again.

Lin stepped back. The color still hadn't returned to her cheeks.

"How did you survive?"

He lowered the half-dead limb to rest on his leg. That had been the most immediate concern, but there was still sewing to be done along his stomach. "How clean are you with a needle? I could use your help with this one."

"How did you survive?" She repeated. "Tell me the rest, and I will help you."

"There isn't much to tell." Memories surfaced, and he piled stones on them until they sank out of sight again. "I tried to stop them and got knocked down hard enough that I couldn't get back up. I would have died in the fire, but the commotion won the attention of a wandering cultivator. He arrived in time to save me. Only me." Zhang Sha paused. His mouth had gone dry, and he found he couldn't rethread his needle one-handed. Lin took it from him without a word.

"The incident was an embarrassment for what remained of the Zhang bloodline, so the honor of seeing the Emperor skipped a generation. The man who rescued me dropped me off for healing with the Hollow Reed Sect, then disappeared. Maybe my Aunt and Uncle got what they wanted in the end, if Yu Jie ever had children. I don't know. I never went back."

"Some people," Lin said, kneeling, "do not deserve family. The heavens saw what they did. I am sure they were not rewarded."

Zhang Sha felt like laughing, but it caught in his throat. They both looked up when Bai Tu barked. The fox was sitting in front of the pillar of silently burning flame like a loyal hound waiting at the door for his master. Fushuai's spirit was still strong. If anything, it had only grown stronger since the eruption. This was the sort of thing that happened when one traveled with prodigies.

Utter nonsense.